The Verdict

First let me just say that I am so touched by the outpouring of love and encouragement in response to my last post. Wow. You guys are amazing!

As to the suggestion to get a livestock guardian dog, llama, or donkey: that will not be necessary. Because we are giving up the goat business. But don't freak out yet! I love my goats, as is pretty obvious to anybody who has eyes. They're a blast to have. But. The workload of tending to 11+ goats has definitely been wearing on me over the last few months. I am just one person, and have been drowning in animal related chores. I've realized that FAMILIES farm, not individuals. The workload fell pretty much on me alone, as Dustin is gone until late in the evening after his horrendous commute. Ayden, as helpful as he is, tends to be more of a chore hindrance than a help, as I imagine any 4 year old underfoot would be. Anyway... the new plan right now is that we are going to turn over this farm to my older brother, Eric. He and his family are moving here in the middle of July, and originally had planned to put a house on the lot that we own next door. The plan now is that they will just move into our house, which I have to say, is pretty stinking awesome. They have dreamed of farming probably even longer than I have, and they have boys who can help out, not to mention a stay-at-home parent who can hold down the fort and shoot to kill raiding dogs and predators.

After the massacre happened, the next morning when I opened my eyes, the first thought to cross my mind was, "Maybe we should just move back to town." I was shocked. I mulled over it in silence all day, and when I asked Dustin if he thought that was a good idea he admitted that he did and had actually been fantasizing about it for a couple of months. He did stipulate, though, that he will never be happy living in a city again and would want to find something just outside of town with an acre or two. I was shocked to hear this, since I had pretty much admitted total defeat in my head and had visions of moving back to Charleston and living in an apartment again. Gag! When he went on to tell me that he would like to find a place that we could have "at LEAST 50 chickens" you could have knocked me over with a feather. How the tides have changed! Here I was the one dragging him into the country to run a farm, and he's the one who refuses to give it all up. He said he'd even like to have a couple goats as pets if he could ever manage to talk me into it. What?!!!!

So. I know this probably sounds like me "giving up on our dream" but as Dustin and my mom keep telling me, it's just evolving into something more suitable for our situation. I will probably end up going back to college in Charleston in the fall, and am seriously considering/exploring a career in agriculture, something that I could do to perhaps train/support small local organic agriculture. I am so passionate about all of this that I don't want to lose it as a part of my life. As it is, my brother and his wife plan to grow fruits and veggies, along with chickens and keeping my existing milk goats (I will soon be down to Tierra, Sable, and Mumble, as I have sold Gypsy, Tiny, and soon Louie and Lucy). They agreed to take the milking goats, but the Angoras are understandably a whole other creature and venture. They are very interested in building a commercial-grade kitchen and making and selling canned goods. I have been brainstorming about what I can do to stay involved, and I really enjoy the marketing and processing aspect of farming, so maybe I'll be a creative/marketing genius for them and the smiling face at the farmers market selling their products. Maybe I'll organize a farmer's co-op and get involved in some sort of CSA movement. Maybe I'll find a chicken farm to take over as my day job. Who knows?

As for an update on the surviving goats, well, its good and bad. Everybody is still alive and kicking, which is good. Lucy's scab next to her eye has fallen off after getting huge and infected, and underneath is beautiful clean pink skin, and her eye has been open again for a few days now. Its so strange to see her peering at me with both eyes now! It's even stranger that that has become a strange thing...

Tierra's puncture wounds, udder, and ear are healing nicely, although I notice that she's not giving quite as much milk on the wounded side as the healthy side. That could just be because I was not milking her heavily at first on that side, though, because it was so painful for her. I am down to milking her once a day now, which I will *try* to maintain until July so my Eric can inherit a doe in milk.

Louie had me worried there for a while because he was so depressed. He would not even stand up when I went out to the barn, let alone come outside for some supervised fresh air and sunshine. Neither was he eating very well. This went on for about 2 weeks, then this last weekend I dragged him by his horns up to a standing position and out of the barn and parked him in the sunshine, then closed the barn door after him so he wouldn't simply go back inside. I did this two days in a row, and when Monday morning rolled around and I went out to feed them, he was up and perky and wanting OUT of the barn. So. Never underestimate the power of fresh air and a little sunshine. I try to keep Sable outdoors as much as possible for the same reason, and because the sunshine is so wonderfully antibacterial.

Sable. Sable. Sable. What can I say about her? She's my miracle baby and I am thankful every day that she is even here. Her neck started out so swollen from the puncture wounds that it was bowed, and it has remained that way. These last couple of days I could swear it has gotten worse, since now when I give her a bottle her head is tilted completely to the side, with the side of her face parallel to the ground. She looks a bit like Frankenstein, and the skin on her neck is shaved and lacerated and as of last night, oozing copious amounts of pus. I draped her across my lap and squeezed a tremendous amount out (for those of you, like me, who enjoy popping a good zit feel free to be a little disgustedly jealous here; I'll understand). Today I took her to the vet in Summerville (I called the one vet here in town who treats goats and she hummed and hawed about if she wanted to see her, then finally conceeded that she'd "work her in" next Wednesday, a week from now). I told the wonderful Summerville vet that I've begun to suspect that perhaps her neck is actually broken, and when I got there he winced at the sight of her, as did all his vet techs milling around. He said he wanted to do an x-ray to determine if it was broken or perhaps just a very severe cyst that we could drain. Well, after one look at the first x-ray he confirmed my worst suspicion, her neck is indeed broken. Shattered is really a better description. He took me in and showed me the films and you can see shards of bone protruding along the length of it, with a huge piece floating in the distended lump. It's broken in so many places its really hard to count, let alone figure out how on earth she is alive and fully functional. He even gave me the x-rays on CDd when I asked, and here they are. I've marked it so you can tell what you're looking at, although it's pretty apparent that something is horribly horribly wrong.

You can see from this first one, a side view, how the entire middle of her neck is bowed away from you. I wish I had my digital camera so I can show you what she looks like on the outside, it would make your skin crawl.

This next one is a view from the top.He said that the worst problem at this point are the bone shards, which can cause no end of problems. They have no blood flow, and therefore bacteria can build up and fester and create chronic infections. Or they can protrude and slowly leave her body, or they can even fuse back against her spine, which I believe wold be the safest option. He said arthritis has already set in, which is actually a good thing because it will over time fuse all these broken bits back together and stabilize the break, albeit in a pretty misshapen way. The only thing we could do for her at this point would be surgery to remove the bone fragments, but that is really not an option, nor did he particularly suggest it. As for the infected puncture wounds, I can only hope the infection does not reach down to the bone and will soon clear up on its own. So, only time will tell what fate holds in store for my sweet sweet Sable. I am OK with her being disfigured for life as long as it will not be permanently painful for her, which the vet said it shouldn't be once everything is fused together. The biggest problem will be that her neck does not come close to allowing her to reach the ground to eat, but thankfully goats prefer to browse on bushes and leaves anyway. I am comforted to know that her deformity will not be held against her, though, because Eric knows what she's been through and can appreciate the miracle that she is just for surviving.

Devastation.

Heres the thing: my farm got massacred by dogs two weeks ago while I was at work. They killed and mauled the goats, killed one of my chickens (the rest must have hid in the coop or something), they even killed our cat Ambrose! I came home to a battlefield scattered with bleeding and dying animals, with the occasional corpse to add flair. It was horrible. It completely devastated me. The worst part was calling every vet in town, only to be told that they only treat cats and dogs. So I'm standing over my 2 month old Sable who's neck is ravaged and she's just lying on her side crying and crying, and I can hear air escaping through a hole in her throat, and they wont come do basic first aid because she's not a dog. I screamed and cried and yelled and sobbed, but nobody would help me. So I called the sheriff and animal control, who showed up and looked around and the animal control officer said, "Wow. This is horrible. Let me go get my camera." I said, "Can't we help the ones that are still alive?!!" So she called in and checked and they told her "we don't treat goats" and that the best thing I could do was get a neighbor to put them down for me. After seeing this was not gonna fly, she gave me the names of some vets in neighboring towns, and to make a long story short, I finally found a vet who'd come from Summerville, an hour away. He showed up at about 8 pm, 5 hours after I got home and discovered what had happened. In the meantime, my mom and Dustin had left work and drove an hour from Charleston to come help, and Dustin's parents came to collect Ayden (who was having a grand time finding new dead animals and poking them with a stick- he's the one who found Ambrose). My goat mentor, Casey, drove 45 minutes to come help and showed up with a cooler full of medicines and supplies. Other goat people I'd met showed up, too, families in tow. They helped carry mauled goats from various corners of the property (even Tierra who weighs about 140 lbs!!) into the barn. After it was all said and done, I had 7 remaining goats with various degrees of damage, ranging from Tiny who was the only one completely unscathed, to Lucy who's eye we thought was gone along with a good part of her face, and Sable with the wheezing hole in her neck. Mumble had a bum leg, Tierra's one ear was completely detached from her head on the underside, multiple puncture wounds on her ears and neck, one front leg, and a few good tears on her side and udder. Louie, who I swear was dead when I first found him but must have merely been unconscious, had his ears in shreds with most of the skin just gone and huge chunks missing. He has so much hair it was hard to find wounds under it all, but that also probably protected him to some degree. Lucy's right eye was swollen shut and about a 2 inch diameter chunk of flesh missing around the eye, another hole on the bridge of her nose so that you could see into her sinus cavity, and another hole the size of a silver dollar on her opposite cheek. A dog had obviously been dragging her around by her face. Gypsy, who was missing for the first couple hours, was eventually found under the bushes by my front door, relatively unscathed but for a 2 inch hole on one of her back legs so that you could see the exposed tendon, and one front elbow a raw bloody mess. When the vet finally arrived, he took a look around and said, "Where do I start?" He'd brought his wife, also a vet, and a vet tech to assist, and together they worked on the goats for almost 3 hours, flushing wounds, giving steroids to fight shock, pushing fluids. We all did what we could to help, even getting down and giving injections for them. Amazingly, all the goats were still alive when I went out the next morning. I had to give antibiotic and pain medicine by injection twice a day for 7 days, which for 6 goats comes to a whole lotta injections! Sable had air under her skin from all the puncture wounds, and her entire torso was crinkly to the touch.

So the casualties were all of my Nigerian Dwarves except for Mumble. That means Harmony, Puck, and my sweet sweet silly Poe are all no longer with us. Sahara was still alive when I got home, but by the time the vet got here we all agreed we could not let her suffer any more and let him put her down. I think in the end their size worked against them. I still don't know how Mumble and Tiny were spared, but Mumble obviously got hurt somehow in the process. Perhaps they were hiding in the barn. Who knows?

One of the worst parts about this for me is thinking how the dogs were here until they simply got tired. Nobody stopped them or chased them off. They were here wreaking havoc and killing until they got bored. It makes me want to scream.

I realize now that I simply cannot keep them safe, so I have to get rid of them. The dogs jumped 3 separate fences to get to them, two chain link, and one electric netting. Since it happened I've had to resort to keeping them locked in the barn with the door closed, which goes against everything I believe in. Animals should be free to live as God intended. But, until a couple days ago they would not venture out even if I was sitting outside the barn door to babysit. Most of them did not even get up on their feet for 3 days, and Sable stood on her own after 6. She's my miracle baby. Her neck swelled to 3 times its normal size, but the whole time she ate and drank like a champ. That first day after the attack I tried to give her some milk in a bottle but stopped when I saw it dripping out the hole in her neck. :( Now she's up and venturing outside, although her neck is still curved and very swollen. I've even begun to think that it could possibly be broken. I've already found a new owner for Gypsy, who's coming to get her next weekend. She's going to breed mini-Nubians with her (she raises Nigerian Dwarves- the woman I bought all of mine from). I have a lead on new homes for Tiny and Louie and Lucy, also. My brother will be moving here in July and would like to take Tierra, Sable, and Mumble. So I just have to try to keep them alive and safe until then.

I've had many suggestions from people for ways to trap and kill my neighbors dogs (who I'm sure did this), ranging from hanging fish heads on industrial size treble hooks from a tree, pans of antifreeze, and simply shooting them. I am proud to say that thanks to my other brother, Mike, I now have a shotgun and riffle, and am just itching to use them.

So now we just don't know what our vision for the farm is, and I'm so hurt and disillusioned that I don't even know if this is a direction I want to go in anymore. Ironically, Dustin is the one who says no matter what happens, he wants to own at least 50 chickens and maybe even a couple goats if he could ever talk me into it again. The irony kills me.

But to experience first hand the fact that an entire dream/business venture can be wiped out in 5 hours while you're at work, from something you never could have prevented... it's just too much for me. We were supposed to pick up a livestock guardian dog puppy this month, but honestly, even with one guardian dog against a pack of what was very probably pit bulls (every manly wanna-be in Walterboro owns a pit bull), I most likely would have come home to a dead dog in addition to goats.

So now I'm a-dog-huntin.